Wednesday, December 19, 2012

Vocabulary Selection for AAC devices

This is Bob, I just thought I'd pop in here real quick and share something our AAC specialist shared with me.

When programming AAC devices one of the things that has always left me stumped was the selection of vocabulary. What do I put on the buttons? I try to be as functional as possible, put in a "more", "help", and "all done". Maybe throw in some nouns in the classroom, but it has always been pulling teeth for me to think of what to add.

So, Gail Van Tatenhove has done some research in the area, and she has a handout that is available on PDF entitled: Normal Language Development, Generative Language & AAC. This hand out briefly reviews normal early language development, then applies it to what we should do with AAC word selection. At the end of the hand out she gives lists of words that you can use when selecting words for your AAC devices that coincide with the first words that children learn in normal language development. I love it! I just thought I'd share that with you guys real quick.